[3.11] [SSF] Cremation Assassin - fun, niche skill, all content viable
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// 3.11 - The build is pretty much unchanged, none of the nerfs or buffs have hit it. We lost a couple %Increased Damage here and there, but it's literally nothing.
After good couple thousand of hours played, I've finally decided to share one of my builds. Here we go. I've done almost all content in the game with this build, including Sirus 8. I did not do Uber Elder because I cannot drop the right fragments for the life of me. Just SSF things I suppose. What is this? If you've missed the title, this is a self cast Cremation Assassin. This build can be 100% done in SSF, even as a league starter. The idea is to straight out create corpses with Desecrate, and clear the whole screen with a single cast of Cremation. This seems clunky at first - you have to cast two skills in a row to kill things. Well, it's really not. Even without any cast speed gear we can cast both skills very quickly, plus our AoE on Cremation lets us clear the whole screen with just one Geyser. It just works™. The good and the bad
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Good: + all content viable, + only one unique is mandatory - Sire of Shards, which is easly farmable in SSF, + scales well with additional investment, + huge AoE, can clear the whole screen with one Cremation, + capable of high single target DPS(>4m), + destroys Blighted maps, can clear multiple lanes at the same time, + can dab on meta slaves. Bad: - this is NOT a facetank build, we have okay defenses, but facetanking is not an option(you can cast your Cremation and focus on dodging for 8 seconds while it deals damage), - two casts to clear, not everyone might like it, - dodge builds can sometimes fail you, since it's RNG, - clear speed is fine, but doesn't come close to the fastest builds, - mobile bosses are trickier to deal with, but nothing too bad. PoB (use the community fork):
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Fully geared:
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https://pastebin.com/0UttiMPc
Early game / SSF starter:
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https://pastebin.com/GiZ6erYR
Additional projectiles and DPS with Cremation:
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Cremation scales very well with the number of projectiles, therefore we're using Sire of Shards, which is BiS for this build. Cremation fires 42 projectiles as a base, with +4 from Sire of Shards we go up to 84, with another +4 from GMP we go up to 126. Additionaly, using Dying Sun we can get another boost, up to 147 projectiles total. Those projectiles are fired over 8 seconds, so we can easly calculate that we're firing roughly 18 projectiles per second. We can have up to 3 Cremation Geysers(4 with the Uber Lab helmet enchant), which brings us up to 54 (72 with Lab enchant) projectiles per second. To calculate final skill damage, we use PoB, which tells us the damage per projectile. With the final build, each projectile deals 157k damage, which translates to 54 * 0,157 ~= 8,5m damage per second(11,3m with helmet enchant), IF all the projectiles hit. This damage is achievable if the enemy is standing directly on all geysers - this is rarely the case, so I'd cut that damage in half. Finally, provided only half of the projectiles hit, we can deal up to 4m single target DPS, which is more than enough for all game content. Additional comment about Gem links:
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All gem links are listed in the PoB, therefore I will only talk about the main skill links: We obviously want to put our Cremation gems in Sire of Shards. Gem links by prority: Cremation - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Inspiration - Immolate - Controlled Destruction - Concentrated Effect For general farming, we might want to swap Concentrated Effect for Increased Area of Effect. Personally, I don't do it because I'm too lazy. Map mods:
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We can do all map mods, except Elemental Reflect. Other than that: - no regeneration - equip a mana flask and you're good to go, - physical reflect - if you don't have Profane Proxy yet, swap Unearth for Desecrate(Unearth deals physical damage), - no leech is perfectly fine to do without any gem or gear swaps. Sire of Shards farm
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Sire of Shards is one of the easiest uniques to farm in the game, we're looking for the Lunaris Priestess divination card, which drops extremely often in The Lunaris Temple in Act 8. Even with bad RNG, farming all 5 cards might take 1 hour at maximum. Further gear explanation:
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Naturally, we're looking to max out our Life, Resistances and Damage from our gear. We are not interested in any Casting Speed increases, since that doesn't increase our damage. Gearwise, we can use rares in every slot except weapon and they will carry us way into the endgame. Before we have our Profane Proxy ring, we use Unearth instead of Desecrate to create corpses and at the same time apply Flammability to enemies. Profane Proxy is just a way to improve the general gameplay by auto-applying the curse and freeing up some links. Kaom's Heart gives us massive HP boost, allowing us to get close to 7k HP. Not much to say here, BiS in my opinion. For an amulet, a rare one with life and crit will do perfectly fine, but for the endgame we probably want either Xoph's Blood or even Aul's Uprising. Flaskwise, we obviously want Dying Sun, since it gives us more projectiles for Cremation, which is a massive DPS boost. Other than that, The Wise Oak, Cinderswallow Urn and even Atziri's Promise(if you don't have Xoph's Blood) are solid options. Ascendancy, bandits and Pantheon:
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Unstable Infusion -> Mistwalker -> Deadly Infusion -> Opportunistic. 2 passive points from bandits. Pantheon up to your liking, personally I use Soul of Lunaris and Soul of Shakari. Cluster Jewels:
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For Cluster Jewels we're looking for %increased Fire Damage, %increased Life and %increased AoE Damage. We really want to roll Doryani's Lesson on the fire jewel for free life leech. AoE Jewel - Assert Dominance gives us best clear AoE, other than that Towering Threat gives us nice AoE and Life. Life jewel is really simple, just go for maximum life you can dish out from it. Videos:
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Videos are recorded on a level 85 character, with 0% quality level 18 gems, so not even close to proper endgame(at which point the character will be obviously way stronger). I did not record Sirus 8 fight, because last thing I need is FPS drops during that fight, lol. General mapping with juiced up 20% Delirium: https://youtu.be/Skq8Bgq0z0s Example conqueror kill on A8 - Veritania: https://youtu.be/-MEA9LNCq_s My (more or less)endgame SSF gear:
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Bear in mind none of these items except Sire of Shards are mandatory! Everything else can be replaced with a rare. Last edited by 100purified on Jul 10, 2020, 4:44:25 AM Last bumped on Aug 27, 2020, 10:41:25 AM
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Good stuff, thanks for sharing!
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Hey, been playing this, it's really fun so far.
I got a question, why do you use wave of conviction and corrosive elements? Elemental exposure doesn't stack, it applies the strongest instance at a time. Other than that, I like this build, I'm not an expert, so I don't know if there are other things to pint out, lol. Cheers! | |
" At the time of creating the build I wasn't sure if those two stack, so I was using both of them. Since they don't you can drop one of them - preferably the cluster jewel skill. EDIT: Since Corrosive Elements lowers the resistance by only 10% compared to 25% of Wave of Conviction, we should aim for a different cluster skill than that, like Widespread Destruction or maybe even Disorienting Display. Last edited by 100purified on May 26, 2020, 7:27:55 AM
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PoE has Framerate issues on the Xbox One during Mapping. If I choose this build is it going to decimate my FPS?
Looks like there's a lot of boom-booms occurring, but I'm liking these particular boom-booms... |
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" My FPS was perfectly fine on a mid-grade PC, but I cannot say how an Xbox will handle it, I have no experience whatsoever with consoles. |
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Well, I'm gonna go for it. I've got my old-school cheat-sheet pen and paper style Cremation Assassin notes ready to go next to the console when the update drops.
Any chance you could add a little detail to your guide about switching between Leveling and Endgame Skills/Items/Socket-Links? I think I understand what all skill links need to be made, but it'd be nice to see it written by the build creator! |
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" I believe in leveling with skills you're going to be using at the endgame, so I use Cremation as soon as it's available. I'm going to add some leveling section to the guide soon, when I find the time. |
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This build aint hc viable?
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" It probably could be done in HC, but I wouldn't do it personally. Dodge is quite an RNG defense and sometimes you can just get one shot even with a decent HP pool. |
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